The Minimalist Educator Podcast
A podcast about paring down to focus on the purpose and priorities in our roles.
The Minimalist Educator Podcast
Episode 065: The Double Whammy Strategy with Christine and Tammy
Unlock the secrets of effective teaching by mastering the "double whammy" strategy with us on this week's Minimalist Educator Podcast. We'll guide you through the art of teaching content and learning behaviors simultaneously, a transformative approach pioneered by Guy Claxton. Discover how adopting this dual focus can reshape your classroom, ensuring that students not only absorb academic knowledge but also develop crucial learning behaviors that lead to long-term success. Through our personal stories and insights, you'll learn how subtle cues from educators can significantly influence students' approach to learning and achievement.
Join us as we highlight the importance of prioritizing skills over mere content. We'll take you inside a fifth-grade math classroom where conversation and collaboration take center stage, showcasing the impact of co-creating goals with students. By incorporating visual aids and tracking systems, you can enhance engagement and ensure a balanced approach to education that equally values skill development and content mastery.
This week's episode is sponsored by Plan Z Education Services - forward-thinking educator support.
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The Minimalist Educator Podcast is a Plan Z Education Services adventure.
Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, a podcast about paring down to refocus on the purpose and priorities in our roles with co-hosts and co-authors of the Minimalist Teacher Book, Tammy Musialski-Bornemann and Christine Arnold.
Speaker 2:In this week's episode we are in part two of a three-part band all around instructional strategies. In this episode we're diving into the double whammy what it is, how it works and why it might just be your secret weapon.
Speaker 3:Let's get into it and we hope you enjoy. Hello everyone, welcome to today's episode of the Minimalist Educator. Today I am chatting it up with Christine. Hi, christine, hi there, how are you today? Oh, all right. I'm excited to talk about today's topic because it follows up last week's topic really well. And it's an interesting one, I think.
Speaker 2:How are you? I think?
Speaker 3:so too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I'm good Happy to be here and have a chat about today's topic as well.
Speaker 3:So we're going to dig in a little bit to what's called a double whammy, and so this is something we mentioned in our book as an effective instructional strategy, and it follows our episode on one teaching point. So already we're talking like one teaching point and then we're talking double whammy. So can you give us a little bit of info on what a double whammy is?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. The double whammy, as it is known as, was coined by Guy Claxton, and he was talking about how important it is for us to frame our learning, our teaching and learning the content of a lesson alongside the learning skill or the learning behaviour. So while we know the content is so important for us to teach, we also need to consider the learning behaviors that we want our students to be picking up alongside that at the same time. So that's what Guy Claxton is referring to when he says double whammy.
Speaker 3:Okay. So we're not talking about like two pieces of content or two doubling up like that. It's two different things, but working together simultaneously.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's right, and a big part of what he's talking about is that whether you plan for the learning skills, the learning behaviors to be picked up, or you don't plan for the learning skills, the learning behaviours to be picked up, or you don't plan for that, the kids are going to learn something anyway. So even if you ignore all that we know about, you know 21st century learning skills or attributes of good learners, if you ignore all of that and just say I've got my content I need to cover, the kids are going to be learning what is valued, what is important for them to be doing. How can they be successful in the classroom? And so his argument is that we should do this really intentionally so that the kids are picking up positive learning behaviours and that we are having a clear direction with that rather than it happening.
Speaker 3:incidentally, yeah, that's. I mean, he guy, class claxton, is a cognitive scientist and education researcher. So, like you know, I'm pretty sure he knows what he's talking about when he says that the intentionality is super important. Because I remember again, you know teaching full time and I'm like, okay, this is the stuff we're covering, and then didn't really pay attention too much to those behaviors, even though there was expectations and you know, I would mention things.
Speaker 3:Or my co teacher would be like, remember, we, you know I would mention things. Or my co-teacher would be like, remember, we, you know, we're teaching this strategy, but a good reader does this, and so we were doing that to an extent, but we weren't super intentional about it. I think it was just kind of a natural part of how we would teach. But the intentionality is really important when we want to see specific behaviors, especially, you know, like these behaviors are ones that we want to see when kids are being taught when they're little, all the way through school, and we can forget that as students get older. We think they just know the behaviors and so we still have to, at those older ages, be intentional about what's the skill or behavior that's going to be taught alongside this content.
Speaker 2:True, Absolutely, yeah for sure. It's making me think about that intentional, not intentional thing. It's making me think back to when not intentional thing. It's making me, um, think back to when I was a very young, new teacher in early childhood. Now I don't know where I picked this up from. I probably heard someone or saw someone doing it. I don't know, I can't remember now, but I used to.
Speaker 2:In the classroom, I used to have activities that were negotiable and non-negotiable. So there was some choice in the classroom, but there were some things that were non-negotiable. You have to do this in the course of your day and um this, this is how I sort of ran the, the, the centers, or the, the different activities in the room, and then I started hearing my kids back in the role play corner talking to each other about this is non-negotiable. I had this real moment of like oh my goodness, what have I been instilling in these kids? And they're now transferring it into their you know their play and their social situations. So, whether you are intending it or not, they are picking up cues from you which they will then use in the rest of their life.
Speaker 2:So you know and I think that can happen in many different ways. You know, if we're focusing all the time feedback that's based on scoring, where we are putting across the message that scores are important, the number, the quantifiable part of your learning, is the important part, and so that's what you do. To achieve, that's what you do to be a successful student in this environment is to get scores and high scores and so on and so forth. So I think, no matter what we're doing, what our teaching approach is, we are instilling these things into our students. So it is. It is really important to be thoughtful with it.
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah yeah, I agree. Um, you never know what students are going to repeat from you, right, especially?
Speaker 3:if it is some of I was thinking about too, not just teaching what the behavior is, but why we're doing it. And again, I think that's one of the things that gets dropped off like, and kids ask why, like, why are we doing this? Right, and we can be put off by the asking why, but we should really just encourage that more because when they understand the behaviors, for well, when we're doing this kind of uh thing in math or science or whatever and we use these skills, this is why yeah, because you know, like this is what a scientist does and a scientist has to la la, la, and so giving that kind of almost like a greater context, I guess, and just understanding the purpose behind something because even if you're your student is five, answer the why. You know it's not, they're not asking you to be annoying, which is what feels.
Speaker 3:It feels that way sometimes, especially when we get lots of whys, but that should be an indicator for us that, oh, maybe I'm not giving them enough context behind the what they're doing and why they should be doing it. And so the double whammy you know, I'm kind of just thinking like a little extension on it where you know we're going to learn this and this is a skill that you learn alongside it, and this is why we do that, just for clarity and transparency and being explicit with our language, because, again, we want students to we're the model we want them to come away with the skills that we need them to transfer through every grade Doesn't matter, and we have to do it repeatedly. So, yeah, anything else you want to add on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just it's. It's making me think about how it depends so much on the content that you're doing in your lesson Doing. Can you do content? You know what I mean? Yes, but you know there are lessons that you're doing or objectives that you're working on that will lend itself more freely to one sort of learning behaviour or skill that you want to see in your students more than others. So I think that will lead you in the way that you do it.
Speaker 2:But, for example, if the students were putting together a presentation and they had a certain amount of time that they needed to complete the presentation, if you are simultaneously talking about those self-management skills and time management skills of how can you use the time that you have available? What if you get to the day before and it's not done? What are some backup solutions? So in that environment you might not necessarily be talking about the skill of caring or kindness or something like that, that might not be as relevant, but you can really use the content and where it leads you to think about what are some of those learning behaviors or student attributes that you want those kids to have and come away with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah for sure. One of the things that are not even things experiences I guess that I have used at the school when I worked in at the school in kona but learned from our friend nicole when teaching in singapore is how to use this um during discovery, so kind of open-ended times where students are practicing skills but they're also reviewing content that they've learned throughout a unit. So up on the board, before students were set off to do what they were going to do, it's like, okay, here's the centers, basically, or the spots where you can visit. These are the content areas.
Speaker 3:So you know fractions or whatever it is for your unit, different types of activities for that, and then, as you're going through these stations, these are the skills that you're thinking about, and so students have the autonomy to choose any of the stations. They can stay at one the whole time. They can, you know, flitter about, but they do have to really think about. It's a lot of the social skills, honestly, and so there's not just one skill focus, because it's stuff they've been working on through the unit, but it's um do if I come up to a new station, is there enough material If I join? If not, what should I do?
Speaker 3:So there's that kind of like self-reflection. If there's um, you know when I'm in a station, what skills am I working on? And usually there is some place for them to refer back to because it is a lot of stuff going on. So then there's the skill related piece to that, whatever the stations are too. So it sounds like a lot's going on and it kind of is. But it's also review, okay. So it's not teaching like a new skill and new content.
Speaker 2:It's used for review so that they can practice all of those skills, right I've just noticed a little pattern, as we've been talking here with these examples of of that. We've been saying it as like content first and then the skill or behavior second, but I I want to point out that it doesn't have to be that way. We can center those skills and behaviors first, with the content coming second as well. I think that's important to mention.
Speaker 3:That's a great point, and I was just in a classroom it was a fifth grade math and the teacher prefaced the class with like here's our goal today. We're good, we're having math conversations.
Speaker 3:That's our that's our teaching point, and so this class like such great conversationalists. But when you go around and listen to them talk about math, it's amazing. And so he gave them these kind of little problem cards to discuss what they were, either in pairs or groups of three, and they had to look at what the image was. So you know how important visuals are in math.
Speaker 3:So they had a visual to look at, and then they had to discuss what that represented in terms of a decimal, and so they had a sheet to like match it to. But the important point was the skill they were working on was discussion. It didn't really matter if they got the answers correct. I mean, they checked them at the end, right. But the point was, and at the end of the lesson the teacher came back and asked the kids what was our goal today, and they said it was to have good math conversations about whatever. And he's like you know a quick check in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, how you felt you did with that. And then, and he's like, and honestly like I know we're practicing that content, that math content, but I really wanted to come around and listen to you talk to each other about it, and so I'm like that was just really powerful, because I think that we can also get caught in. Well, what's the thing they're going to produce today?
Speaker 2:Where's the?
Speaker 3:worksheet or where's the paper that has the thing, and it's not always going to be like that. Sometimes it's your anecdotal notes from things that you've heard kids say that you just have to jot down, and that's fine, right. But the key there was that it was it definitely was the skill before the content, and I mean he could have used any content, right, he was listening for how the kids were talking to each other about that content, so I thought that was really powerful, yeah that's very cool.
Speaker 2:I like that um so tammy. Aside from just being intentional planning it out, whether it's in your planning documentation or just in your in the front of mind as you go into your lessons, are there any other ways that you feel like we could purposefully powerfully, um bring in this double whammy approach?
Speaker 3:I think so we could again, I hate to put I'm not necessarily putting content first, but that's what teachers know they're going to be teaching. So I'm going to say teachers can come with the content and share with their student. We're going to be learning about this for the next three weeks, or whatever. Going to be learning about this for the next three weeks, or whatever. What are some skills you think we need to work on while we learn this content?
Speaker 3:So that co-creation of in the planning process, where, okay, students are identifying, you know, these are the things that we're going to have to do when we're doing research or when we're doing our small group work or when we are working on our final project, and so you don't always have to be the one that tells them the skills that they're working on, because they'll probably know, which is great, but just telling the kids, right, you can co-create that list and post it up, and then again, that's one of those reminders for students while we're learning this content. These are the skills that I'm going to focus on and during each lesson then you can choose okay, today, this is what our content area is, this is how we're going to learn it. What skills are we going to be looking at and then each day, you know, maybe you put a sticker, you know, whatever, something beside it so that the focus is there for students as well.
Speaker 2:So anytime we can co-create something with our students, we know that they're going to be more invested, because we're not just telling them For sure, and that would be so cool to do if you're at one of these schools that has you know values or a student profile list, things like that know values or a student profile list, things like that so you're actually getting the kids to refer back to those important things that your school has articulated, that you want the students to be. Um, so yeah, that'd be a really exciting thing to do, to co-create with the kids together. I love that, that idea. Yeah, do we have a pare down pointer today, tammy?
Speaker 3:Maybe, as a starting point, would be to evaluate if and when you're doing double whammies Okay. So I know we didn't really talk about that, but we kind of did with like being intentional about planning, but do it. Yeah, do a check in and see when, like are you just strictly focusing on, like, this is the content and I'm never talking about the skills explicitly, because we do have to do that and just kind of see where the gaps are and maybe where you can fill in some specific skill pairing with the content.
Speaker 2:For sure, and I think I would build on that and say, yeah, if you could institute some sort of tracking system for what it is that you have, like if your school has that list already ready to go, or if you just pull out those you know 21st century learning skills or whatever it is that you know of that you're familiar with, and and try and track it somehow so that you know you are getting that breadth of that as well as the breadth in content as well yeah, I like that.
Speaker 3:Any kind of system like that is going to help with your data collection which helps you communicate with parents.
Speaker 2:So for sure. And if you get to bring in a spreadsheet in your day, of course you're going to do that. Is that just me? Is that just me?
Speaker 3:Oh no, I've got a few spreadsheets myself, so okay.
Speaker 2:Bring it in with your double whammy as well.
Speaker 3:I like it. That's right. Yeah, for sure, I think. Yes, I think those are some good couple of pare down pointers. Honestly, it feels doable, I think so. Thanks for this conversation. It's always a pleasure chatting.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll see you all next time.
Speaker 2:Today's episode was brought to you by Plan Z Professional Learning Services forward-thinking educator support. Find out more at planzplservicescom.
Speaker 1:Be sure to join Tammy and Christine and guests for more episodes of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. They would love to hear about your journey with minimalism. Connect with them at planZPLS on Twitter or Instagram. The music for the podcast has been written and performed by Gaia Moretti. Thank you.
